Foodies take on Greenwich in Dishcrawl

Lisa Chamoff

Updated 11:13 am, Thursday, May 9, 2013

Jesse Leeds-Grant of Dishcrawl, a business that takes participants on restaurant tours, serves food during the event at the Ginger Man restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013.
Photo: Bob Luckey

At left, Justin Hume of Bridgeport and Sarah Pond of Westport, drink specialty beers during Dishcrawl, a business that takes participants on restaurant tours, at the Ginger Man restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013.
Photo: Bob Luckey

A slider, crab cake and home-made fries were on the menu at the Ginger Man restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013, during the Dishcrawl event. Dishcrawl is a restaurant tour business.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Greenwich resident, Jason Sanner, second from right, samples a crab cake during the Dishcrawl event at the Ginger Man restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Dishcrawl is a business that takes participants on restaurant tours.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Greenwich resident, Jason Sanner, second from right, samples a crab...

At left, Jesse Leeds-Grant of Dishcrawl, a business that takes participants on restaurant tours, leads Casey Hallen of Stamford and others from the Ginger Man restaurant to Barcelona restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013.
Photo: Bob Luckey

Barcelona Chef, Mike Lucente, speaks to Dishcrawl participants about his bacon-wrapped date dish he was featuring at Barcelona restaurant in Greenwich, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Dishcrawl is a restaurant tour business.

A mob of self-professed foodies descended on Greenwich Avenue Wednesday night for the second in a string of restaurant tours organized by Dishcrawl, a California-based start-up founded in 2010 that's expanded to more than 30 cities and towns.

The inaugural Greenwich event took place Tuesday night, and the tours have sold out quickly. Stamford is also getting in on the action, with the first Dishcrawl there set for May 29.

The $45 tickets cover food and gratuity at four restaurants. Participants have to bring cash for drinks. Three of the locations are kept a secret, with participants emailed the first meeting point a couple of days before.

Casey Hallen, 26, treated her mom, Barbara, to the Dishcrawl as an early Mother's Day gift. The two moved from Irvington, N.Y., to Stamford two years ago, so Barbara was excited to explore the restaurant scene elsewhere in Fairfield County.

"You tend to always come back to what you know," said Barbara, 58.

"So it helps you to try new things," her daughter added.

The tour started off with the basics. After Dishcrawlers grabbed craft beer and wine at the bar upstairs at The Ginger Man, chef Gerald Alcin dished out sliders with bacon, hand-cut fries and a small crab cake with a tomatillo sauce and jicama slaw.

There was plenty of foodie-centric conversation. As he tried the sliders, Norwalk resident Rob Beattie, 38, couldn't help but compare them to the ones at Burger Bar in South Norwalk, one of his favorite spots (though as a foodie, he admitted it's hard to pick a favorite restaurant). His friend, Cristina Andreassi, 34, agreed that it didn't compare.

Jesse Leeds-Grant, hired as the one-man operation for Greenwich, picks the restaurants -- they generally have private rooms -- checks people in and then follows up with heavy social media promotion. He even retweeted participants' contributions throughout the evening.

Leeds-Grant, of Stamford, who could be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's twin brother, said the idea is to "bring community together over food."

Bringing people together it did. As they lingered over their plates of fries, Beattie and the Hallens dished about the Stamford dining scene.

After whetting their appetite at The Ginger Man, members of the group trooped up the Avenue and around the corner to Barcelona Wine Bar on West Putnam Avenue, which featured ham-and-chicken croquets, a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with blue cheese and grilled shishito peppers with olive oil and sea salt.

Kapitulik heard about the event through OmNomCT, a food blog written by a Fairfield County couple.

Though both Kapitulik and Torello, 33, have been to Barcelona many times before, they enjoyed the opportunity to try some new dishes.

Though the third stop was a surprise, Kapitulik had read about Tuesday night's Greenwich Dishcrawl on another food blog, so she wondered if they would visit a food truck.

She was right. The group made their way to the parking lot of the Havemeyer Building, where Maddy's Food Truck, a new operation that serves Haitian fare, was waiting.

As Leeds-Grant helped distribute grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and avocado, one of the participants struggled to get just the right iPhone photo with only the small light from the back of the truck.

The next Dishcrawl will take place June 11 in Old Greenwich, followed by one in a "surprise neighborhood" on June 25. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.dishcrawl.com/greenwich.